JANUARY 7
Rosarita starts January off with a forceful but graceful punch. A short, Spanish-translated novella that challenges the reader’s sense of perception with its unique use of second person. Much like the background of its author, Illusion, trickery, the mother and the false mother are the cores of its themes, all wrapped in lush descriptions of Mexico and its western coast. The year is starting off incredible for lovers of novellas and the canon of magical realism!
JANUARY 21
Honestly, it’s probably my current favorite poetry collection. This collection includes short, translated poems alongside the original Spanish. A Zapotec writer, Natalia Toledo invokes the hard shell of the crab covering its soft body to depict human suffering within honor, liveliness within decline, and reverence within superstition and ritual. So much goodness radiates from these pages; if you are a lover of poetry consider this book a treasure.
JANUARY 21
I’m so excited for this new translation of Russian provocateur, Vladimir Sorokin. Sorokin’s writing is quite political and can be extremely dense in its satirization of bureaucracy and propaganda. Dispatches promises much grotesquery in its stories and has an eye-catching cover to boot. Sorokin is currently living in exile in Berlin, and I think we’re all going to need a healthy dose of rebellion and general impropriety to make it through this cold January.
JANUARY 21
I was absolutely stunned by this collection of stories from the bibliography of Can Xue. To start, it is an incredible work of translation from Rochester’s Open Letter Press. Xue’s stories are often tales of spiritual awakenings and intense atmospheric pressure from both the outer, natural world and the inner, excited spirit. I intend on coming back to this collection throughout the rest of the year.
JANUARY 28
This will be my first Kolanovic novel, and its premise has me so incredibly hyped. Simply put, it’s the story of a young girl who survives the Croatian War of Independence while playing with Barbie dolls. Human nature always goes to weird places when it comes to children and dolls, and Underground Barbie puts a traumatizing spin on this premise. Kolanovic has a reputation for dark, dark humor and I expect this read to be dizzyingly perspective inducing, one of the most important kinds of novels.